Better way to build string

ruby-talk
1

I'm guessing your code either includes name/value pairs for html/xml tag
attributes or for a query string. I don't see why those two things would
be put in the same function, but if you REALLY want them to spend their
lives together:

return "" if properties.empty?
if prop_type == "tag"
  properties.map {|item| " #{item.name}=#{item.value}"}
  #or alternatively:
  #" " + properties.map {|item|
"#{item.name}=#{item.value}"}.join(" ")
else
  "?" properties.map {|item| "#{item.name}=#{item.value}"}
end

If you're using this function for what I think you're using it for...
make sure you escape things properly. For the query strings, use:

require 'uri'
"?" + properties.map {|item| "#{item.name}=#{URI.escape(item.value)}"}

For the attributes, make sure that you escape the values to remove &,"
and ' and any other character that doesn't belong in your encoding. Even
better, use something like Builder if you're building up XML/XHTML.

···

-----Original Message-----
From: marcus [mailto:m-lists@bristav.se]
Sent: Wednesday, 9 November 2005 5:41 AM
To: ruby-talk ML
Subject: Better way to build string

I'm trying to build a query string based on an array of
properties. Is there a shorter/nicer way to do the following?

   def build_query_string(properties, prop_type)
     result = ""

     properties.each do |item|
       if prop_type == "tag"
         result += " #{item.name}=#{item.value}"
       else
         if result == ""
           result = "?"
         else
           result += "&"
         end
         result += "#{item.name}=#{item.value}"
       end
     end

     result
   end

/Marcus

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